Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley

Author:Andrew Michael Hurley [Hurley, Andrew Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: John Murray Press
Published: 2019-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

When he woke again, still on the couch, it was to full daylight and the sound of the hare’s claws against the window. It raked and scratched, clouding the glass with its breath as it pined after the field and the wood.

Outside, the first true warmth of the year was starting to melt the snow in the front garden. The ash trees dripped and the roofs of the cars on the driveway gave off wisps of evaporating moisture. In the sunlight, wood and stone were polished. It was almost blinding to look along the lane. But it was the birds, thought Richard. The astonishment of them. Down in the wood, they were loud with delight but also shock, as if after the long winter they had found their songs too big for their mouths and could not prevent them from spilling out across the field.

The hare gazed through the window, its eyes following every movement of the world outside. Richard had known since it skinked out from under the desk that it could not stay here long. To keep it locked up in the study would be cruel. The poor creature didn’t know that it had been a parable. It just wanted to eat.

But it would have to wait until dusk. To take it back to the field weak from undernourishment and in broad daylight would make it easy prey for the vixen or the rooks. Though the question of how he would get it there was difficult. He didn’t think that it would allow itself to be picked up and the box in which it had slept had been torn open in its awakening.

In the shed, behind a stack of fence panels that he had been meaning to break up for the woodstove, Richard found some of the fruit boxes that Juliette used to pick up from Cannon’s to use as kindling. Two of them sandwiched together would make a temporary cage and keep the hare contained while he removed it from the house. Yet it was a powerful animal and would be stronger still when it was full of fear and adrenalin. Unless the lid was secured in some way it would easily burst free, so he cut some lengths of wire that he could use to lash the two crates together once the hare was inside. And to get it inside in the first place would not be easy. Harsh though it might be, he would have to make the creature go hungry for a few hours more so that it could be lured by food later.

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